When you read a restaurant menu, you might not notice that there are no dollar signs. Why is that? Removing currency symbols severs the connection between restaurant purchases and real money in your mind, and makes you spend more. No, really. [More]

Have you ever noticed that the menus in nice restaurants leave the currency signs off prices, or spell them out in words rather than Arabic numerals? The intended effect is pretty much what you would assume – to remove the association between prices on the menu and actual money. Now, there’s actual academic research showing that half of this theory is true.